Joshua M. Hall, Ph.D.
- Wayne, NJ
- 973-720-3723
- j.maloy.hall@gmail.com
Joshua M. Hall is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University. His current research focuses various historical and geographical lenses on philosophy's boundaries, particularly the intersection of aesthetics, psychology and social justice. Altogether, this includes a coedited anthology on philosophical practices in prisons (entitled Philosophy Imprisoned), forty peer-reviewed journal articles (including in Philosophy and Literature and Philosophy Today), nine anthology chapters (including in Philosophy of Childhood: Exploring the Boundaries), and over thirty conference presentations (including three invited speaking engagements, the American Psychological Association, and the national meeting of the American Society for Aesthetics. His related work in the arts includes one mini-chapbook collection and over seventy poems in literary journals (including Folio, Shampoo, and Roanoke Review) and over twenty years’ experience as a choreographer, instructor and performer.
2017: William Stewart Travel Award, to present Invited presentation, “Dancing-with: A Theoretical Method for Social Justice,” at the Engagement Symposium of Philosophy and Dance (supported by the American Society of Aesthetics), at Texas State University
2016: Faculty Development Committee Award, Emory University, for two presentations applying my dissertation, at the American Philosophical Association (Pacific) and the University of Pittsburgh’s “Doing the Body in the 21st Century” Conference
2016: chosen, from a group of 120 faculty members in the Social Sciences Department, to conduct a “Mini-Class” in philosophy for prospective students and parents at the fall Open House, CUNY Queensborough
2015: Philosophy Imprisoned, an anthology coedited with Sarah Tyson at the University of Colorado Denver, earned a “Recommended” review in Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries
2014: anonymously recommended, as founder of the Birmingham Philosophy Guild, to consult on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’ upcoming MTV documentary on Millennials ' perspectives on race in the United States
2013: top student evaluations in the "Common Core" program at Samford University, "Top University in Alabama (Forbes) and #3 school in the South for "Best Undergraduate Teaching (by U.S. News & World Report)
2012: Berry Award for Best Publication by a Graduate Student, for “Revalorized Black Embodiment: Dancing with Fanon” – Vanderbilt University
2011: Berry Award for Best Publication by a Graduate Student, for “Choreographing the Borderline: Dancing with Kristeva” – Vanderbilt University
2009: J. E. Simons Award for Best Paper – Gonzaga University Graduate Philosophy Conference
2007-2012: Harold J. Sterling Vanderbilt Fellow – Vanderbilt University
2004: poetry scholarship to Prague, Czech Republic – Prague Summer Program
2003-2005: Graduate Scholars Award – Penn State University
2003: poetry scholarship to St. Petersburg, Russia – Summer Literary Seminars
Humanities Advisor for the Sidewalk Film Festival, Birmingham, Alabama, August 22-27, 2017: https://sidewalkfest.com/
invited cofacilitator for “The Fierce Urgency of Now: A Space to Process the Election,” at Gibney Dance, Manhattan: https://gibneydance.org/event/fierce-urgency-now-space-process-election/
anonymously recommended, as founder of the Birmingham Philosophy Guild, to consult on Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas’ upcoming MTV documentary on Millennials' perspectives on race in the United States
invited for interview (4/17/15) with National Public Radio (NPR) about Jefferson State Community College’s Queer/Straight Alliance (QSA), which I founded in response to a hate crime on campus in the fall of 2014
Philosophy Imprisoned, co-edited with Sarah Tyson, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at University of Colorado Denver (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014)
“Student Protests of University Investments: Harvard and Vanderbilt’s African Land-Grabs” Business Cases in Ethical Focus, ed. Fritz Allhoff and Alex Sager (Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview, 2019) (forthcoming)
"Dancing-with: A Theoretical Method for Poetic Social Justice,” Philosophy and Dance, ed. Rebecca Farinas, Craig Hanks, and Julie C. Van Camp (New York: Bloomsbury, forthcoming)
“Twixt Mages and Monsters: Arendt on the Dark Art of Forgiveness,” The Philosophy of Forgiveness, Vol. 2: Dimensions of Forgiveness, ed. Court Lewis (Wilmington, DE: Vernon, 2016), 215-240
Anne Waters, American Indian Thought: Philosophical Essays, in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society (forthcoming)
Einav Katan-Schmid, Embodied Philosophy in Dance: Gaga and Ohad Naharin’s Movement Research, in The Philosopher’s Magazine 77 (spring 2017), 117-118
Noël Carroll, Living in an Artworld: Reviews and Essays on Dance, Performance Theater, and the Fine Arts in the 1970s and 1980s, in Dance Chronicle 37:1 (winter 2014), 122-128
“100 PHILOSOPHERS 100 ARTWORKS 100 WORDS #58," interpretation of the poem “Keeping Things Whole,” by Mark Strand, on the website Aesthetics for Birds:
“Kierkegaard’s Dancing ‘Knight of Faith’,” Zouch Magazine (spring 2014)
“Eco-Authority and Mad-Heroics: Ortega, Borges and the Quixote,” White Whale Review, 1:2, (spring 2009)
“Sly Silly Creativity: Dorfman’s ‘Prophets of Funk’,” dance review in Zouch Magazine (spring 2014)
"ZOUCH Close-up: Interview with David Dorfman," interview in Zouch Magazine (spring 2014)
“Self-Torsion as a Liberating Force in Death Row Art,” art review for Tennessee Students and Educators for Social Justice (summer 2014)
current total of seventy-four poems, including in the following literary journals, three of which are multiple Pushcart Prize winners:
Ibbetson St. Magazine Main Street Rag
Shampoo The University of Chicago’s Euphony
Xavier Review Chiron Review
Mobius Zouch Magazine
Lilliput Review The Montucky Review
Entasis Black Fox Literary Magazine Monday Night
Folio Hazmat Literary Review Roanoke Review
Invited presentation, "Dancing-with: A Theoretical Method for Social Justice," at Engagement Symposium of Philosophy and Dance (supported by the American Society of Aesthetics), Texas State University (fall 2016)
Invited session on Philosophy Imprisoned, Public Philosophy Network Conference, The Prison and Theory Working Group (summer 2015)
Roundtable Discussion on Philosophy and the Prison System, Vanderbilt University Philosophy Department Colloquium (winter 2015)
“The Necessary Pain of Moral Imagination: Richard Wright’s White Man, Listen! and Haiku,” Long Island Philosophical Society, spring 2017
"Apprenticing in Difference, and Queering Teaching Performance: Two Progressive Strategies for Straight White Male Philosophers,” American Association of Philosophy Teachers (AAPT), American Philosophical Association (Eastern), winter 2016
Philosophy of Law William Patterson University 2019
Ethics William Patterson University 2019
Intro to Philosophy William Paterson University 2019
Liberal Studies Colloquium William Paterson University 2018
The Arts of Social Justice William Paterson University 2018
Asian Philosophy CUNY, Queensborough 2018
reading ability in Chinese, Ancient Greek, German and French reading and speaking ability in Spanish
lead facilitator for “Hope for a New Life,” a substance abuse support group, with a focus on heroin addiction, at Birmingham AIDS Outreach (BAO) in Birmingham, Alabama
three years of experience as a volunteer counselor at the Crisis Center, suicide and psychological crisis hotline in Birmingham, Alabama
American Society for Aesthetics (ASA)
Humanities Advisor, Sidewalk Film Festival – fall 2018
Founder, Paterson Philosophy Guild, fall 2018 – present
peer reviewer, Journal of Black Studies, 2011 – present
peer reviewer, Philosophy Today, spring 2018 – present
member, editorial staff, The Agonist, spring 2018 – present
member, The Nietzsche Circle, spring 2018 – present
Member, Department of Social Sciences Curriculum Committee, fall 2017 – present
Member, QCC Archival and Cultural Resources Committee, fall 2017 – present
Faculty Mentor, ASAP Program, fall 2017 - present
Figuration: A Philosophy of Dance
Supervisor: John Lachs, Centennial Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University
Dance receives relatively little attention in the history of philosophy. My strategy for connecting that history to dance consists in tracing a genealogy of its dance-relevant moments. In preparation, I perform a phenomenological analysis of my own eighteen years of dance experience, in order to generate a small cluster of central concepts or “Moves” for elucidating dance. At this genealogical-phenomenological intersection, I find what I term “positure” most helpfully treated in Plato, Aristotle and Nietzsche; “gesture” similarly in Condillac, Mead and Kristeva; “grace” in Avicenna, Schiller and Dewey; and “resilience” in Fanon, (Judith) Butler and Deleuze.
With these analyses in place, I apply the four Moves in analyzing various forms of dancing (including salsa dancing and the pollen dance of the honeybee) and coordinate them to outline a comprehensive philosophy of dance. This philosophy points to certain conditions for an ideally flourishing, dancing society. And these conditions create the possibility for a coalition of sympathetic discourses (including critical race theory, queer theory, disability studies and democratic theory) united in pursuit of political virtue.
The development of a philosophy of dance offers a deeper understanding of the intellectual values of a practice often identified with bodily immediacy and therefore judged uninteresting. It also reinvigorates philosophy with the dynamism and bodily relevance of the practice of dancing. Most important, it demonstrates the meaningful intersection of aesthetics and political ethics, by exploring how aesthetic practices underlie and inspire human flourishing.